Review of Alien (1979) by Rob S — 25 Jul 2015

To say this movie is a good movie in relation to the "body genre" is an understatement. I got a very upset stomach when John Hurt's character had an alien bulging through his chest. I knew the iconic scene before viewing the movie, but actually watching the film made it affect me so much more. I also nearly had a headache towards the conclusion when there were strobe lights flashing in order to build the tension for the climax. This is strange and impressive because my body usually does not respond to films that much, even in the "body genres.".

I watched this in a science-fiction film class, but we were discussing it and it is almost ambiguous as to whether this film more readily fits into the sci-fi or horror genre. The heavily black mise-en-scene would point to horror, but the ideas of aliens and robots easily puts this film into the sci-fi genre.

The pace of this film is very peculiar to me. On one hand, it is particularly slow towards the beginning of the film, which made it enjoyable as a faster-paced film once the conflict with the titular alien arises, but this fast pace almost skipped information in my opinion. What I noticed was that once the alien starts attacking the various crew members, the members would die, but then the film would quickly cut to the characters back at the safe part of the ship either discussing the death or holding something the character had on him/her right before they died. These quick cuts imply that the characters found the bodies and returned without trouble; wouldn't it make more sense to show them going to find the bodies to build even more suspense since the audience would question whether the alien moved on or not? Isn't it possible the alien would still be with the bodies?

After a lot of exposition, a face-hugger clamps itself onto the John Hurt character, and while Ripley wants to leave him in order to follow protocol, the audience wants to see them take care of the man; all of the audience except me, that is. I know the alien needs to get onto the ship in order for the film to have relevance as a horror film, but I found Ripley's reasoning to be past logical - it's the only reaction that makes sense, but I guess we want to see people sticking out for each other, so the alien gets on board. Thanks Ash, you company man cyborg.

Other than these complaints I have, this film does an excellent job at evoking bodily responses which makes for a fun, yet unsettling, experience. I can't wait to see what comes in store next when we watch Aliens next week.